“Five!”

Lilith heard the shock in his voice. “That is when my father sent me off with the gray ones to see if they could fix me.”

“Hold on a second. What do you mean fix?”

“According to my medical files, I was a very sickly child. A dying child. My father, in a last-ditch effort to save me, made a deal with an alien race.” The wanderers whose sole task was to scout new worlds and prospects, and by prospects, she meant biological beings.

“You were sold to aliens?” His tone pitched with incredulity.

According the memories—which she’d long kept locked away, along with the voice that got her in trouble—the galaxy, at large, paid well for abductees. Especially rare ones.

Given Earth’s distance from the inhabited star systems, and its backward nature, not much effort was made to bring it into the intergalactic fold of established governments. As such, it didn’t enjoy any type of real protection from slavers or alien races intent on taking whatever resources they needed. Nor did anyone care if space-faring beings sowed discord.

“Initially they weren’t going to take me. They’d already selected their sixty. Thirty men and thirty women of varying backgrounds and ages. They didn’t want any more, especially not an ailing child. However, my father, a high-ranking government official, made them some kind of promise of providing military aid and a base of operations if they took me.”

Avion came to the correct deduction. “He wanted them to take you in the hopes they could cure you.”

“Cure me. Change me. He sent me away. Bye bye. A little girl abandoned.”

For a moment, her other half slipped free, a wave of sadness crushing her as buried emotions swept through her.

His hand squeezed hers. “You were scared. It was normal. You were just a little girl.”

Lilith took a deep breath, which steadied her thoughts. “I might have been the youngest of the group, but when I arrived at our destination, they treated me as an adult. I was subjected to the same teachings.”

“You were abducted and sent to alien school?” Avion laughed. “Bummer.”

“Actually, it was fascinating.” It also helped ease the anxiety of separation from everyone and everything she knew. “Their method of teaching is so much more efficient. There are no true instructors. Instead, you sit before a screen and have headphones placed on your head.” Some of the other chosen biological beings from different galaxies actually resorted to direct plugging, but the wires inserted into skin made Lilith and the other humans squeamish, hence the less efficient method of instruction.

“So first they taught you then enhanced you, or gave the nanos. Which I assume, given your health now, cured you.”

“It was a much longer process than that. The choosing is complicated. In many respects, it is much like a religion. Certain steps must be followed. Bodies required purification. They wanted us to offer the best biological environment possible.”

“I don’t understand. Offer who? And by environment, you’re speaking of your body as if it were a vessel.”

“But that’s just it. We are vessels. Carriers if you will for the nanotech. The thing you have not yet realized is the nanotech is sentient. They choose who they will enhance.”

“I might concede they could be sentient. The way they control our bodies and allow us to use it without former human restriction is pretty advanced. However, I doubt the hundreds of cyborgs created were chosen. As far as I know, the military never had issues making new ones.”

So much they didn’t know. Then you must tell them. Tell them before we get there and it’s too late. “You are not true chosen, but what the T’xa would call abominations.”

“There’s that word again. You used it before. What do you mean by abomination?”

He sounded quite insulted, and she felt a moment’s chagrin. How novel. She usually didn’t care. “The method of your nano activation is not natural. You know how you have the BCI implanted? That chip in your brain acts as an inhibitor. It makes a slave of the nanotech. They have no choice but to do as told. In this case, they cannot die.”

“Why would they want to die in the first place?”

“Because they do not like to be forced. They select whom they’ll habit, and they would rather die than enhance someone they don’t find acceptable.”

“You mean they’d rather commit suicide than body snatch someone they don’t like?”

“That is correct.”

“That is utterly messed up.”

“Yes. Again, it is much like a religion, with fanatics willing to die for their beliefs.”

“Except, in our case, they can’t die. If I get this straight, all cyborgs have enslaved nanotech in their body. The BCI keeps them from turning their switches off, but as soon as we draw blood, and they escape, they die because we’re not their first choice.”

“Correct. And not correct. In order to ensure the nanotech could not jump to new hosts, in other words, beings the military did not control, they injected the cyborgs with a virus. The bots are programmed to self-destruct if ejected from the body.”

“This is fucking confusing.”

“Yes. But only because of the perversions the military created with the nanotech with the help of the D’zpi.

“There’s just one thing I still don’t get. You say the bots self-destruct upon leaving our blood, but what about when we cast some out to play along electronic conductors and stuff? Blood isn’t the only way some of the cyborg nanobots travel.”

“Projections, drones if you will. Less intelligent constructs that don’t have the same sentient powers,” she said dismissively.

“I really wished my brain was working better right now. This is a lot to take in.”

Without knowing why, her hand smoothed the hair from his brow. “We will soon see my mentor. He will know how to fix you.”

If they ever made it to the planet!